Springboard

In case you hadn’t noticed, Christmas is thundering into view at some pace! Whether you celebrate it or not, Christmas has a habit of generating plenty of extra activity, be that fun stuff like mince pies with the neighbours, or less lovely concerns around trying to juggle the budget. I was talking to a friend about this the other day. She has two school-age children who are full-on with plays, discos, trips to the pantomime, Cub Scout parties, carol concerts and everything else. She also has a full-time job, pets and an elderly parent to care for. Oh yes, she [...]

I don’t believe in “personality clashes” – at least not in the sense of “Oh, they’ll just never get on – it’s a personality clash”.  When I hear that phrase uttered at work, it seems to me to be a way of explaining why the two people concerned have not been ‘encouraged’ by their manager to learn how to get along with each other.  A justification for avoidance.  A justification for not dealing with the behaviour and leaving the people involved (and around them) to work within the hostility. Of course, there are people we don’t get on with and [...]

Last week I was speaking with Helen, the General Manager of a residential home for older people I have come to know quite well. We were talking about the upcoming Christmas period and how some of her residents no longer have family or friends that can come to visit them. Here’s what she told me, pretty much as she said it. “I’ve been encouraging the staff to come up with ideas for new ways we can entertain and motivate our residents. We do lots of the usual things, and they like those, but I can’t help feeling there are other [...]

Last week I had one of those ‘aha!’ moments, and as is often the case, it happened in a session with my business coach. (Yes, coaches need coaching too!) It was this phrase that did it: “We constantly try and find our purpose. Maybe instead we should CHOOSE our purpose and work towards that.” What do you think? Let me explain why this was an important thing for me to hear. An underpinning principle in personal development is that to become fulfilled, we ‘find’ our purpose. If we honour that discovery when it happens, we will go on to frame [...]

Every now and again, something I read sears straight through to my head and my heart. And so I find myself using this Guest Blogger slot to tell you about a very special book I’ve read this week. The book is called Into the Woods: When Love Isn’t Always A Fairy Tale and it’s by Julie Leoni, a Coach working here in the UK. The link to buy a copy is given at the end of this posting. I thought long and hard about bringing this to you in the lead up to Christmas, when the expected focus is on [...]

Other people wind me up! I was recently in a traffic jam with my husband and he was not a happy bunny!  We had been warned by the electric signs on the road that we were heading towards a hold-up about 30 miles further down the road, so we knew we were in for a wait – over an hour of delays, it turned out.  However, after 5 or 10 minutes the chuntering began “Look at that [idiot] over there”, “Oh no you don’t matey, you’re not getting in in front of me…” and so on.  I wasn’t wound up [...]

One of the things I really dislike about Facebook are those posts that seek to play on our emotions to ‘make’ us share the post.  You know the ones I mean – the “share if you care” or “I bet I won’t get even one like because I’ve been told I’m so ugly” kind of posts.  Now, I’m usually an easy-going, even tempered person; but my internal reaction to those posts is usually “Well, I obviously don’t care then” or something similar.  This is because my rebellious side kicks in – I don’t want to be manipulated into doing something [...]

I often wonder what drives our life decisions.  Are we making decisions that are logical, reasonable and based on our own goals that we have set for ourselves?  Or are we somehow trying to live up to someone else’s expectations, wishes or hopes for us?  Or living up to some idealistic picture of who we think we should be? Let me explain – I often think about two particular instances in my past that remind me of this question. The first was that of a manager of mine who was very driven and was seemingly never satisfied with where her [...]

As I run my own business I am selling things.  I sell my time, my knowledge, my expertise, my products. That means I engage in a sales process with my clients, moving them towards saying yes and buying what I have to sell. I’ve been on a variety of courses and read self-help books to aid my success in this area. One of the bits of information that I’ve picked up is that it can take up to 7 contacts to get to the yes, to actually make the sale. That might mean a phone call, followed by a brochure, [...]

I had a complete weekend off last week. Well I thought it was a weekend off. I’ve started reading through some family archives. I’ve got around 200 letters between my uncle and family members written between 1944 and 1947, together with lots of other info like his posting notices. He was in the Royal Naval Air Squadron. I’ve been meaning to do this for ages, I started cataloguing it all a while ago and haven’t got round to reading it until now. Now from this distance I can see how fascinating this story is. I was completely absorbed in the [...]